Meat quality reflects comprehensive combination of physiochemical characteristics of fresh or processed meat, such as the appearance, tastiness, and nutrition, among which the tenderness and water retention directly affect the edible value and commercial value of meat products. Tenderness is the foremost physical index of the tastiness of the meat, and reflects the quality of the meat and the structural characteristics of the various proteins. Meat tenderness refers to, firstly, the impression when chewing of meat tissues, whether the meat is easily separable to biting of teeth, secondly, whether it is easily chewed to pieces, and thirdly, the quantity of the residue left in the mouth after chewing, which is often associated with softness, juiciness, and ease of chewing for cooked. It is of an immediate significance for the production of meat products and for the appraisal of the meat quality to determine meat tenderness and water retention. What runs counterpart to tenderness is the muscle toughness of the meat, which refers to continual resistance of the meat muscle when being chewed. The more aged the muscle, the more muscular the muscle fiber, the richer the fascia, the more the veins, the more difficult it is to chew. Water retention of the muscle is related to muscle tissues. Water retention refers to the capability of the meat to retain water of the meat per se or that added during meat processing, which is a comprehensive index of the capacity of the meat including that of the meat itself to preserve and retain water under various processing conditions, and is closely related to other meat quality indexes such as flavor, color, and tenderness.
The determination of muscle tenderness may be subjective or objective. A subjective method is via tasting by a human, while an objective one includes various physical and chemical methods by means of instrument analysis to determine the various indexes such as shearing, penetrating, biting, chopping, compressing, elastic, and tension forces, so as to determine the muscle tenderness. Currently, the most commonly employed index for determining muscle tenderness is shearing force. Generally, water preserving and retaining capacity is obtained via a centrifugal method by means of calculating water quantity changes in meat.
Phosphate is a conventional meat tenderizer used in the meat processing industry nowadays, and is the most widely used food additive worldwide due to its tenderizing and meat quality improving effects. However, the addition of excessive phosphate results in reduction of the meat quality and is detrimental to human health.
Therefore, it is extremely desirous to develop a composition for improving meat product quality by means of improvement in formulation and techniques. The composition shall not contain phosphorus element, and the tenderizing effect thereof shall still be effective in the process of repeated freezing and cooking.